


Say It Enough To Make It True (Or Not)

by farfetched



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Denial of Feelings, Experimental Style, Fluff, Getting Together, Hanahaki Disease, Happy Ending, Kuroo is not fooled, M/M, Moving In Together, POV Second Person, Post-Canon, Self-Denial, Tsukishima Kei is Bad at Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-06-03
Packaged: 2018-11-08 10:45:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11079969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farfetched/pseuds/farfetched
Summary: You're not in love. Those flowers you cough up aren't related to any feelings you don't have, and even if they were, they're not for him.But you're not in love. So it doesn't matter anyway.(Tsukishima does not have feelings for anyone. Kuroo knows differently.)





	Say It Enough To Make It True (Or Not)

You're not in love. 

As you stare, you think there must be some kind of mistake. You don't fall in love. That's for other people to do so you can laugh at them. It's not you. You don't fall in anything, anyway. You don't fall. End of. 

It almost has you looking around for an alternate source, as though you'd ever keep plants in your bedroom. Cacti, maybe, spiky and cynical like you, loners. But not flowers. They smell too much, and girls coo over them, and you don't like anything that is cooed over. 

Almost. 

But it's ridiculous. The whole thing is ridiculous. 

You're not in love, and that is the end of it.

* * *

Or at least, it should have been. 

You're not in love. 

So why, then, do pictures of him filter through on your phone, a mystery unto itself how he got it, you didn't give it him (dammit, Yamaguchi!) and flowers flood from you? 

You're not in love. You don't even like him much. He's good at volleyball, sure, but you don't even see him at training camps now. You think you might have seen him for three seconds at Nationals, but the accession paths didn't match up, and you didn't play them. Didn't get far enough. 

Maybe this year- you start to think, but he's a third year. He was, anyway. 

He's at college. Scholarship for volleyball, although he's surprisingly not stupid, for all he seems it. Texts about random subjects file through. 

Why do you reply? You didn't give him your number, he never asked for it so why- 

You can't stand people who lie. You've met too many of them, been burnt by them too many times. You can't stand lying. 

But you can lie to yourself. You don't like him. _Lie_. You don't want to see him ever again. _Lie_. You don't find yourself looking into the entry requirements to his college so you might spend another year with the chance of playing alongside him. _Lie_. 

But you're not lying when you say you're not in love. Because you're not. It doesn't matter what anyone else might think - although as it happens no one thinks anything because no one knows - you are not in love with him. 

Even if there are sporadic petals about the place.

* * *

You're not in love with him. 

High school flashes by, and you change your phone and the number when Hinata smacks it out of your hand with his errant flailing and breaks it, and the two things you miss most from it are the music player (easy to navigate, you're used to it) and the thread of texts with him. 

You text him your new number without a second thought. Yamaguchi smiles when your new phone pings, not yet on silent, and you glare, and Yamaguchi doesn't shrivel like he would used to, just grins a bit wider. 

He doesn't know. There is nothing to know. You're not in love. 

You might, with an arm twisted behind your back, admit that he looks pretty good, for a guy. His gravity and physics defying hair, blacker than night and always, always in front of his face. Somehow he always looks shady, although he's the first one to send a picture of a kitten he saw on his campus. 

You wonder if he texts anyone else as much as he does you. 

But nobody twists your arm and you don't have to admit it, you just play volleyball unimpeded by such stupid thoughts, and don't think about how you might see him next year. 

You met up with him when you were in Tokyo for Nationals the second time. Not for long, just grabbing lunch together in between games, and grabbing lunch actually meant eating the one you'd packed while he bought something from a vending machine, then proceeded to steal half of your lunch. 

You don't look for him in the crowd when you win that game. You don't avoid looking in the next one, when you don't. You go home and you ignore your phone for the night, even as it flashes with messages. 

Flowers don't mean anything. There are other diseases. Probably. You're no medical expert, how would you know? You just cough them up, throw them away and move on. They're purple, and that's all you know. They don't mean anything, they aren't anything, they are just stupid flowers from your stupid lungs that keep coughing sporadically. It feels like it's getting better, some days, though. 

You weren’t in love in the first place. But you're pleased you're getting better, and wish it would hurry up and go completely. 

You don't feel sad at the prospect. You're fed up of flowers.

* * *

You're not in love when your eyes widen across the hall, because he is there. When his eyes spring open too, and a grin smothers his face, and he darts and bobs over to you. When he says hello in that voice of his that you never didn't realise you missed. When your voice sticks in your throat a bit, almost like flowers, almost like nothing else. 

You're not in love when he flings and arm around your shoulders and drags you immediately off to meet his friends, most of whom you know from his stories. 

You're not in love when he buys you a coffee in the college cafe, cheap and nasty but nice all the same. When he offers to help you settle in, and takes you on a campus tour, showing you all the quiet spots that are good for studying (although he wiggles his eyebrows, and you're not in pain when you sardonically ask what else he's gotten up to in such quiet spaces with other people you don't know). 

You're not in love when he leaves you at the door to your residences, when you sit on your bed and your breath leaves you in one great rush and your mind is locked on him. 

You're not in love. 

You're not lying.

* * *

You see him around a surprising amount. He works in the campus cafe, it turns out, and he grins every time you go in, and maybe you just forgot to get a biscuit and you're kind of hungry in between lectures and okay, the shop is a little bit closer, but the cafe does really good biscuits and they're cheaper, so it's worth the extra few minutes’ walk and the hassle. Maybe the coffee machine in your room broke a few more times than it actually did. Maybe you offer to get coffees for other people more frequently than you want one yourself. 

You're not in love. It's what it is to have a friend, isn't it? To see them every day, to miss their presence all the time when you're not with them, to be vaguely disappointed when they're busy with other people when you're free, and you sit at home and try not to smile at the texts he sends you on his travels. 

You're not in love. You've just never really had a friend like him before, a friend that you want to be physically close to. The flowers weren't for him, they were- they weren't anything more than a stupid disease he'd had for a year or so, stupid and annoying but not debilitating, and definitely nothing to do with him. 

You _don't_ hope it's him every time your phone goes. You _don't_ respond just a little faster to him than to anyone else. You _don't_ see Yamaguchi rolling his eyes when he sees a text come through and you ignore it, but you twitch with the _lack of_ want to respond immediately. 

You're not in love. That would be bad. So you're not.

* * *

You're not in love at two in the morning in a loud club filled with people who perhaps are more attached to their own gender than you'd ever thought anyone would let themselves be. You're not in love when you turn and find him there. You're not in love when he leans in, agonisingly slowly, you're not in love, you're not in love. 

You're not in love when you rock forwards to meet him a quarter of the way there. 

It's a kiss, which doesn't mean anything much. He's pretty good looking, you'd even stretch to handsome, and you haven't kissed anyone ever really (that fumble behind the bike shed in middle school with that one girl doesn't count, it was awful and sloppy and this is-) 

This is _not_ amazing. You _don't_ forget everything else, you _don't_ fumble to put your drink down to get a better hold of him, you _don't_ press against him harder. You _don't_ spin the two of you around so he's the one trapped against the bar, your arms penning him in, and he's totally _not_ at ease with it. He _doesn't_ growl into your mouth, _doesn't_ nip at your lips, _doesn't_ blow you away when he deepens it, _doesn't_ make you rue the need to breathe with his tongue in your mouth and his hands in your hair and on your back and he _doesn't_ make you wish you were both alone. 

You're not in love. You're looking for release, and when you part ways, you don't say anything. You're not in love, and it won't happen again.

* * *

You're not in love when it becomes something of a regular thing. 

He _doesn't_ traipse over to your flat sometimes, lock the door behind him, and approach with that grin that doesn't make your heart race. Your heart doesn't race, it maintains a steady rhythm, like the one he doesn't maintain when he strokes his hands through your hair, when he- 

You're not in love. 

You're not in love when he reaches for your hand as you sit side by side in the library. You're not in love when you let him. 

Your hand is cold. You didn't need that hand anyway, absently flicking through a book you can absolutely concentrate on, your mind not distracted by the feel of his calloused, obnoxiously warm hand in yours, and the way you remember all the things those hands have done to you, all the things your hands have done to him, all the places they've touched, and you _don't_ almost squeak when he smiles, then grins, his fingers crawling up your sleeve. 

You are focused on your study. You are not in love. 

It's only payback when you hook your ankle around his and shift your foot up his leg, under the table. You're not in love with the smirk that invades your face at the gasp he makes, you're not in love. 

_You're not_. It won't last.

* * *

You're not in love when your parents find out when he comes over to visit. The way you are _not_ annoyed that he keeps a polite distance, just friends just friends (but isn't that-), and then right as he's going embellishes you with a kiss as though he knows how much you've _not_ been longing for him to do that. 

You don't tell your parents that you're not in love when your mum peers around the corner to ask whether he needs something for the journey, and sees you two. You think she knows, the way she hardly reacts, asks her question, and gets her answer, and sidles away. 

You know you're not in love. This is just temporary. This is just a placeholder. You don't fall into anything. You don't fall. 

So you're not in love. The last time you fell was when you were twelve, legs a little too long for you. 

You haven't fallen since.

* * *

You don't tell your parents you're not in love when they sit you down after dinner, after he's gone, and you're _not_ feeling the space of his absence. You think they know anyway, because there's never too many words between the three of you. You're glad your brother isn't here, because you'd probably have to tell him. He wouldn't just get it. 

You've never told anyone you're not in love with him. No one's ever asked, so you've never had to say no. 

But you would. If asked. Because you're not.

* * *

You _don't_ watch him languidly stretch out on the (your, his and yours, both of yours') sofa, sunshine filtering through the dusty air of the apartment. You do yell at him because you're not even half moved in yet, but you _definitely don't_ shriek when he grins and hooks an arm around your waist, don't _not_ fight the way you fall onto the sofa next to him, oh so close, and your heart _doesn't_ pound when his eyes meet yours and he smiles, so wide it splits his face ( _oh god he's so handsome_ , you _don't_ think) and leans closer to press his lips to your nose. 

You're not in love. It's just natural to kiss him properly at that point. 

And if Bokuto makes some ridiculous noises and accusations when he barrels in with a load of boxes, well, he doesn't know anything at all.

* * *

_I'm not in love_ , you murmur to yourself, mainly, nervous and jittery. He hears though, and turns, and his face falls for about two seconds. 

Then he asks you to repeat yourself. 

You do. You add to it. 

_I'm not in love with you,_ you say. 

He is stoic for all of three seconds, before he laughs. Laughs, and laughs, his suit is getting wrinkled by the force of it, and he can barely breathe, and you don't really get it. 

When he starts to recover, he marches over, and yanks your tie down to make your head at his level, and he smirks. 

_Kei_ , he murmurs, almost directly into your mouth, his eyes on yours and staring intensely. _I think you're so in love with me you don't know what to do with yourself_. 

You blink. Once. Twice. Three times. 

Then you grin. 

_I think you might be right_ , you say, and swallow any response he has.  
Maybe you can admit it. Maybe you are just the tiniest bit in love with Kuroo Tetsurou. 

But only a little bit. 

(Oh, who are you kidding.)

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if it's confusing! This also ended up longer than I thought it would. Still, hope you enjoyed it, and if you have any questions/need any clarification, feel free to ask!


End file.
